Semiconductor firm AMD has partnered with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), HP and Clarkson University in a significant research project that focuses on the industry-wide challenge of channeling renewable energy directly to data centres.
The research project will also examine critical questions of how to automatically shift a compute load between data centres and maintain reliability, as wind and solar-derived energy can be intermittent.
This study, which is backed by NYSERDA and additional private funding sources, and developed by AMD engineers in association with Clarkson University, will enter the research phase with students to begin experimentation on effectively managing data through a distributed network based on renewable energy.
The second phase of the project plans to incorporate hardware elements, including HP’s Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD) based on the AMD Opteron™ processor, purpose-built for energy efficiency and cloud computing.
AMD corporate vice president of Research and Advanced Development Alan Lee said the distributed computing model of the cloud parallels the distributed power-generation model of solar and wind energy.
"Directing power to data centres from these emerging renewable energy resources without relying on a large-scale, traditional electrical grid is a key challenge," said Lee.
"One ultimate goal is the co-location of dynamic energy sources with dynamic computing resources to improve the economics, performance, and environmental benefits of both infrastructures."
